How Can Governments Borrow so Much?

Transcription

1 How Can Governments Borrow so Much? Fabrice Collard Michel A. Habib Jean-Charles Rochet August 26, 2013 University of Bern. UZH, SFI, and CEPR. UZH, SFI, and TSE. We would like to thank Barry Adler, Hans Gerbach, Gita Gopinath, Gérard Hertig, Howell Jackson, Leonardo Martinez, Geoffrey Miller, Enrico Perotti, Mark Roe, Roberta Romano, and seminar participants at the IMF, the universities of Konstanz, Marseilles, and Sydney, and the Third ETH-NYU Law and Banking/Finance Conference for very helpful comments and suggestions. Claire Myriam Célérier and especially Ethem Ibrahim Guney provided superb research assistance. We are responsible for all errors.

2 Abstract We analyze the determinants of government debt under the twin assumptions that governments have limited horizons and default only when government income falls short of debt service requirements. We derive a government s maximum sustainable debt ratio, that is, the debt ratio chosen by a myopic government whose horizon does not extend beyond its current term in office. Maximum sustainable debt varies across countries, consistent with Reinhart, Rogoff, and Sevastano s (2003) evidence of different countries differing debt (in)tolerance. Actual debt ratios are below their maximum sustainable levels, as governments seeking further terms in office fear debt-induced default that may jeopardize their prospects for reelection. The difference between actual and maximum sustainable debt ratios creates a margin of safety that allows governments to increase debt if necessary with little corresponding increase in default risk. The probability of default climbs precipitously once the margin of safety has been exhausted.

3 1 Introduction Perhaps the defining characteristic of sovereign debt is its near total absence of enforcement mechanism: unlike the case for corporate debt, it is very difficult if not impossible for a creditor to seize the assets of a defaulting sovereign. Rogoff (1999, p. 31) consequently has deemed the question why, exactly, are debtor countries willing to make repayments of any kind to be the crux of understanding international debt markets. Two answers to this question have been provided: the threat to deny a defaulting country further access to debt markets (Eaton and Gersovitz, 1981) and that to impose direct sanctions on the country (Bulow and Rogoff, 1989a, 1989b). 1 Building on these two answers, a number of papers have calibrated country debt-to-gdp ratios. 2 It is probably fair to say that they have fallen short of reproducing prevailing country debt levels. 3 In the present paper, we revisit the issue of sovereign debt with a view to obtaining debt levels that are perhaps closer to the cross-sectional evidence than may so far have been obtained. For that purpose, we dispense with the two assumptions made by most existing papers, specifically a government with infinite horizon that defaults strategically, to replace these with the opposite assumptions of a government with horizon limited to its expected term in office that defaults only when unable to service its debt. 4 We show that our alternative assumptions more naturally result in government debt levels in the vicinity of those observed in practice. A government whose horizon is limited to its expected term in office naturally neglects possibly negative consequences of government borrowing that occur beyond that term. A limited horizon government therefore can be expected to borrow more than its infinite horizon counterpart. High government demand for funds is met by high investor supply of funds, as investors who do not fear strategic default recognize that the limit to lending stems from the government s ability rather than willingness to service the debt: default occurs when government income falls short of debt service requirements. Investors further recognize that a government s ability to service existing debt depends on its ability to raise new debt. Investors base their lending decisions on government disposable income, that is, that part of government income that could if 1 Possible sanctions have ranged from trade sanctions to outright occupation in the age of gunboat diplomacy. 2 See the literature review in Section 2. 3 Cohen and Villemot (2013) report debt-to-gdp ratios ranging from 1.5% to 30%, which their own work extends to 47%. Table 1 shows prevailing debt levels to be markedly higher for the vast majority of countries considered. 4 These assumptions are justified below. 1

4 necessary be directed towards debt servicing: not all spending can be so directed, as the government must maintain some minimum level of services and investment. Government disposable income is a fraction of government income, itself a fraction of GDP. Thus, high ratios of debt to government income do not necessarily translate into high debt to GDP ratios. We initially consider the case of a myopic government whose concern extends only to its current term in office. We characterize the government s maximum sustainable debt level and its associated default probability as functions of the mean and varianceofgrowthingovernmentdisposable income, the ratio of government disposable income to government income and that of government income to GDP, and the risk-free rate. Maximum sustainable debt varies across countries; it can be viewed as a measure of a country s debt tolerance: countries that have lower maximum sustainable debt and/or higher associated default probability are, in the words of Reinhart, Rogoff, and Savastano (2003), more debt intolerant. We then consider the case where the government s concern extends beyond the current term, perhaps because the government may be reelected to office. We show that the prospect of further terms in office induces the government to decrease borrowing below its maximum sustainable value, in order not to jeopardize through default the benefits of being in office during these further terms. The default probability correspondingly decreases. We calibrate our model using IMF data over the period Maximum sustainable debt levels can be surprisingly large, attaining 224% of GDP for Austria, 222% for France, and 216% for Sweden for example, under the admittedly arbitrary assumption that the ratio of government disposable income to government income is 40%. 5 These results may be due to relatively high mean growth rates (2.1% for Austria and 2.2% for Sweden, but 1.4% for France), relatively low growth volatilities (1.5% for Austria and 1.4% for France, but 2.2% for Sweden), and, last but not least, high ratios of government income to GDP (49% for Austria and for France, 56% for Sweden): perhaps not surprisingly governments that command a higher fraction of their countries GDP can borrow more. These high maximum sustainable debt ratios are associated with relatively low maximum default probabilities (0.58% for Austria, 0.53% for France, and 0.91% for Sweden). These reflect the assumption of growth lognormality, analytically tractable as well as empirically warranted to some 5 Note that even a halved disposable income to income ratio of 20% would still result in maximum debt ratios of 112% for Austria, 111% for France, and 108% for Sweden, well above was is generally considered sustainable. Importantly, sustainability is not the same as desirability; we return to that distinction in the Conclusion. 2

5 extent. Not all countries have high maximum sustainable debt levels and low default probabilities: Argentina s maximum sustainable debt level is 61% of GDP, reflecting the country s high growth volatility (6%) and low ratio of government income to GDP (28%); its mean growth rate over the period was 2.5%. Argentina s maximum default probability is 3.01%, indicating that (relatively) low maximum sustainable debt levels may nonetheless be associated with (relatively) high maximum default probabilities. Actual debt ratios are generally lower than maximum sustainable debt levels, reflecting the importance of the prospect of reelection. Thus, Austria, France, and Sweden had average debt ratios 64%, 50%, and 55% of GDP, respectively, over the period , ending with 72%, 86%, and 38% of GDP, respectively, in Associated default probabilities are essentially negligible. We interpret our findings as implying that a country whose actual debt ratio falls short of its maximum sustainable debt ratio enjoys a margin of safety that affords the country the discretion to increase its debt to GDP ratio with little corresponding increase in its probability of default. This may explain why France, as well as the UK (2011 debt ratio 82%, maximum debt ratio 148%) and the US (2011 debt ratio 103%, maximum debt ratio 135%) have seen little if any increase in their costs of borrowing despite rather dramatic recent increases in their debt ratios. Things are very different once the margin of safety has been exhausted: Argentina had average debt ratio of 73% over the period , a mere 12% over its maximum sustainable level, yet the associated default probability was 82%. The same is true of Japan for example, whose maximum sustainable debt level is 106% of GDP with associated default probability 1.06%, but whose average debt ratio was 117% of GDP, with associated default probability 96%. The marked asymmetry between the probability of default s very slow increase below the maximum sustainable debt level and very fast increase above is a natural consequence of the trade-off involved in computing the maximum sustainable debt level under the assumption of lognormality: lenders equate the (infra)marginal benefit of increased repayment absent default with the marginal cost of an increased probability of default; where default is lognormally distributed, cost equals benefit around the point at which the probability of default starts its dramatic increase; debt levels that exceed the maximum sustainable level are therefore on or beyond that part of distribution where the probability of default increases very quickly. 6 The contrasting experiences of Argentina, which has defaulted on its debt, and Japan, 6 To understand the intuition, it is helpful to represent the lognormal distribution by the succession of a very 3

6 which has not despite increasing its debt to 229% of GDP in 2011 (associated default probability 100%), suggest that our model captures only part of the debt phenomena at work. As already noted, we replace the two assumptions of infinite government horizon and strategic default by the opposite assumptions of limited government horizon and default that occurs when government income falls short of debt service requirements what Grossman and Van Huyck (1988) call excusable default. We justify our decision on two grounds. First, we believe our assumptions are, on some dimensions at least, more realistic than the alternative assumptions. Regarding the length of the government s horizon, a theory of government debt predicated on the government s concern with developments that occur beyond the government s term of office clearly is at odds with the self-interest that Public Choice Theory for example attributes to government motives and behavior. Less rigorously but perhaps no less tellingly, conventional wisdom often holds that a government s horizon rarely extends beyond the next election: Acharya and Rajan (2012) elegantly note that the well-worn maxim Après moi le déluge is widely considered accurately to reflect the attitude of the vast majority of governments in power. 7 Regarding default, a theory of default based on strategic considerations is not consistent with Levy Yeyati and Panizza s (2011) evidence of governments reluctance to default: governments default when they have no realistic option of servicing their debt, not when they deem the option to default to have a higher payoff than the option to service the debt. Levy Yeyati and Panizza (2011) attribute governments reluctance to default to (i) governments desire to be seen as engaging only in excusable default and (ii) governments fear of losing office upon default. Tomz (2007) presents strong evidence that it is governments that engage in inexcusable default default despite having income sufficient for debt service that suffer the costs of default. Borensztein and Panizza (2008) and Malone (2011) find that governments that default see a marked decline in their prospects for reelection: domestic bondholders are also voters; even the bonds sold initially to foreign bondholders may ultimately accrue to domestic bondholders through trading in secondary markets (Broner, Martin, and Ventura, 2010). 8 Bolton moderately sloped ray ending some distance before the mean, a very steeply sloped line segment ending some distance after the mean, and another very moderately sloped ray. The maximum sustainable debt level should be around the intersection of the first ray and the line segment, with higher debt levels being on the line segment or the second ray. 7 The literal translation of Après moi le déluge is After me the flood. Our work follows Acharya and Rajan (2012) in analyzing the implications for government borrowing of very short government horizons. For an early attempt at doing so, see Rochet (2006). 8 Foley-Fischer (2012) provides contrary evidence. He argues that an incoming government may signal its competence though default. 4

7 and Jeanne (2011) provide another, important reason for governments reluctance to default: government bonds provide the collateral for interbank loans; government default jeopardizes the value of that collateral, thereby impeding the functioning of the banking system and its ability to finance investment. Second, our assumptions make for simpler modeling than the alternative assumptions. Parsimony therefore should favor our assumptions over the alternative, in case the former should make possible the derivation of results no less satisfactory than those derived under the latter, at least in so far as concerns our primary variable of interest, specifically the level of government debt. Besides simplicity, our assumptions may in fact facilitate obtaining the desired result. Surely, lenders should be willing to lend more when default is excusable rather than strategic. Equilibrium levels of debt under excusable default therefore should be higher than under strategic default, thereby serving to attain the high levels of debt observed in practice. Our calibration results show this to be indeed the case. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews the related literature. Section 3 presents the model. Section 4 considers the case of a myopic government to obtain a country s maximum sustainable debt ratio. Section 5 extends the analysis to the case of a government whose concern extends beyond the current term in office. Section 6 presents the data. Section 7 discusses the results of the calibration. Finally, Section 8 concludes. 2 Literature review It is probably fair to say much of the literature on sovereign debt can be viewed as constituting a very rich tapestry weaved on the loom of Eaton and Gersovitz s (EG, 1981) seminal work. 9 Later work has quantified, refined, and extended EG s predictions, and endogenized some of what had been exogenous in EG. Thus Aguiar and Gopinath (2006) and Arellano (2008) have embedded the basic EG framework into the setting of a small open economy to study the interactions of default risk with output, consumption, the trade balance, interest rates, and foreign debt. Arellano (2008) ascribes the countercyclicality of interest rates and the current account to incomplete financial contracts. As interest and principal payments cannot be made to depend on output, the incentive 9 The present literature review is by necessity rather limited in scope. For extensive literature reviews, see Panizza, Sturzenegger, and Zettelmeyer (2009), Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), and Sturzenegger and Zettelmeyer (2006). 5

8 to default is higher in recessions than in expansions. Interest rates consequently are lower in expansions, thereby inducing countries to borrow more when output is high. Borrowing finances imports, which deteriorate the current account. Aguiar and Gopinath (2006) incorporate a trend into the output process. They distinguish between the two cases of stable and volatile trends and show that only in the latter case can observed default frequencies be replicated in calibration. Where the trend in output is stable, there is little value to the insurance provided by access to international debt markets. A borrower in recession therefore has a strong incentive to default. The interest rate schedule consequently is extremely steep and borrowing does not extend to the range where default occurs. Where in contrast the trend in output is volatile, insurance is valuable and the incentive to default is weakened. The interest rate schedule is less steep and borrowing extends to the range where default occurs. Mendoza and Yue (2012) have endogenized output and the collapse in output that accompanies default. Theirs is a general equilibrium model in which domestic firms borrow internationally to finance their purchase of foreign inputs. A sovereign default jeopardizes firms access to foreign working capital loans, thereby forcing the firms to substitute domestic inputs for the previously purchased foreign inputs. As the former are imperfect substitutes for the latter, TFP declines and the effects of the negative output shock that triggered default are amplified. Cuadra and Sapriza (2008) have considered the role of political risk. 10 They show that political instability (one party may lose power to another party) and political polarization (different parties represent different constituents with differing interests) combine to increase borrowing by decreasing the importance a party in power attaches to the future. The negative consequences of borrowing are lessened when shared with another party that has other constituents. A positive consequence of borrowing is to tie the other party s hands, thereby preventing that party from lavishing its constituents with debt-financed favors should the party come to power. 11 Yue (2009) and Benjamin and Wright (2009) have considered the role of renegotiation in default. Yue (2009) considers Nash bargaining under symmetric information. Disagreement payoffs are zero for creditors and the autarkic payoff for the defaulting country. Yue (2009) shows that the parties bargain to a reduced level of debt that does not depend on the defaulting country s original debt: 10 See also Hatchondo, Martinez, and Saprizia (2009). 11 Our analysis in Section 5 shares much with that of Cuadra and Sapriza (2008), but not the assumptions of strategic default or infinite government horizon. 6

9 the parties let bygones be bygones. Haircuts therefore are increasing in the defaulting country s debt. They are decreasing in the country s output: countercyclical interest rates increase the payoff for the country to rejoining international debt markets; they increase the bargaining surplus that is shared by the parties. Benjamin and Wright (2009) note that the period to the resolution of default extends over many years. They attribute the delay in default resolution to the requirement that the defaulting country s commitment to servicing post-resolution debt be credible. As the incentive to default generally decreases in output, credibility requires that the defaulting country s output recovers from the low level that likely prompted default in the firstplace. Thisisoften a protracted process. That the country emerges from default only after output has recovered provides an explanation for the otherwise puzzling observation that default resolution often results in post-resolution debt that is no lower than the original, pre-default debt. Hatchondo and Martinez (2009) and Chatterjee and Eyigungor (2012) have considered the role of debt maturity: when not all debt is retired every period, the issuance of new debt serves to dilute the value of existing debt; lack of commitment creates a prisoner s dilemma that results in increased government borrowing at higher interest rates. While short-term debt therefore should dominate long-term debt, this need not be true where self-fulfilling rollover crises may occur (Chatterjee and Eyigungor, 2012). Fink and Scholl (2011) have considered the role of conditionality. They show that international financial institution (IFI) involvement may increase rather than decrease interest rates, by inducing additional borrowing on the part of a government that expects to benefit from IFI support. Cohen and Villemot (2013) have noted the difficulty of existing models simultaneously to match the first moments of debt and default probabilities: high default costs that make possible the matching of debt ratios preclude that of default probabilities; low default costs have the opposite effect. 12 Building on Levy Yeyati and Panizza s (2011) finding that output contractions generally precede rather than follow default, Cohen and Villemot (2013) have developed a model in which the cost of default is borne in advance. Governments in such case do not have the incentive to stave off a default whose cost they have already borne. As already noted, our work departs from the EG assumptions: there is neither strategic default nor infinite government horizon in our model See in particular Table 1 in Cohen and Villemot (2013). 13 Some previous work has maintained one but not the other EG assumption. For example, Catão and Kapur (2004) maintain the assumption of strategic default but dispense with that of infinite horizon. They focus on the 7

10 As noted in the Introduction, our work shares the assumption of short government horizon with Acharya and Rajan (2012). Our work differs from theirs in assuming excusable default where they assume strategic default, and in focusing on calibration issues (e.g., what is a country s debt tolerance expressed as a percentage of GDP?) where they focus on the determinants and the implications of strategic default (e.g., why do myopic governments purposely exacerbate their country s financial fragility? Why are haircuts in default so moderate?). We conclude the present section by noting that, unlike the assumption of strategic default, the assumption of excusable default is not subject to the well-known Bulow-Rogoff critique (Bulow and Rogoff, 1989a, 1989b), whereby exclusion from debt markets alone fails to deter default because a defaulting government can use the amount otherwise to be reimbursed to purchase an insurance contract that provides the same risk sharing as does government borrowing. A government that has excusably defaulted has no income with which to purchase the insurance contract. It further stands to lose office. 3 The model Assume for simplicity a government s term in office lasts a single year and consider a government that is in office in year. Let denote the government s disposable income in year ; denote the proceeds from issuing debt in year, expressed as a fraction of government disposable income ; denote the face value of that debt, again expressed as a fraction of government disposable income but payable in year +1; denote the gross rate of growth in government disposable income, from to +1, distributed ln () 2 (), () 0 (); and denote the risk-free interest rate. 14 The maximum amount the government can borrow is = Pr [(1 + +1) +1 ] + R (1+ +1) 0 +1 ( +1 ) 1+ (1) effect of macroeconomic volatility on government debt. Conversely, Bi and Leeper (2012) maintain the assumption of infinite horizon but dispense with that of strategic default. They characterize the fiscal limit that arises from the dynamic Laffer curve. 14 We distinguish between government (total) income and government disposable income and express debt as a fraction of the latter because even the most creditor-harried governments are unlikely to allocate all income to debt servicing. While a government can and generally will cut non-debt servicing spending to avoid defaulting on its debt, it is difficult to envision a government reducing all spending on defense, education, health, and law and order to zero. 8

11 Default occurs in year +1 when the sum of government disposable income in year +1 ( +1 ) and the amount the new government can borrow in that year ( )isnotsufficient to service the debt raised in year ( ). We assume lenders can appropriate the entirety of government disposable income in default, but that no new borrowing is possible in such case: lenders do not throw good money after bad; there is a sudden stop. 15 This is unlike the case of no-default, in which proceeds from new borrowing can be used to service existing debt. Note that the debt the government can raise in year,, depends on the debt the government can raise in year +1, Rearranging (1), we have = = = " 1 +1 Pr 1+ " Pr " µ Z # (1+ +1 ) +1 + ( +1 ) 0 Z # (1+ +1 ) + () + 0 Z (1+ +1 ) 0 # () (2) Using the lognormality of () and defining ln ³ (3) we can rewrite (2) as 16 = ( )[1 Φ ( )] Φ ( ) 1+ (4) where Φ () denotes the standard normal cdf. We have thus far assumed that the funds at the government s disposal in year, +,suffice to service the debt 1 1 that the government has inherited from the government that was in 15 We assume without loss of generality that default lasts only a single period. 16 To transform (2) into (4), rewrite ( ) as exp ( + ), ( ( )) as Φ ((ln ( (1 + +1)) ) ) =Φ ( ), and () as 0 (1+ +1) ln () + 2 Φ = exp ( + ) Φ ( )= 2 Φ ( ) 0 where (ln () ). 9

12 office in year 1 (recall that a government remains in office only a single term, that is, only a single year): + > 1 1. If that should not be the case, and if + 1 1,then the government defaults during its term of office in year We assume that the government loses office upon default. This assumption plays no role in Section 4, but will play an important role in Section 5. 4 Myopic government and maximum sustainable debt Consider a myopic government whose horizon does not extend beyond its current term in office, perhaps because it is all but certain to lose power at the next election. The government naturally raises all the debt it can: the government need not concern itself with default except insofar as default affects the amount the government can borrow because it will not be in office to be confronted with the consequences of default. 17 We define maximum sustainable borrowing to be the maximum amount the government can borrow on a sustained basis, and maximum sustainable debt the corresponding amount owed by the government. A myopic government maximizes present borrowing given lenders expectation of future borrowing =max ( )[1 Φ ( )] Φ ( ) ( +1 ) (5) 1+ A Rational Expectations Equilibrium (REE) is a sequence of s that satisfies = ( +1 ). All REE are unbounded, except maximum sustainable borrowing = +1 = with = ( ). 19 We therefore seek the fixed point =max ( ) (6) where ( ) (1 + )[1 Φ ()] Φ ( ) 1+ (7) 17 Recall from Section 3 that debt has maturity one period. 18 For simplicity, we refer to as borrowing rather than borrowing as a fraction of government disposable income, more exact but also longer. We likewise refer to as debt. 19 We use the subscript for maximum. The condition = +1 = precludes the formation of a bubble that would see debt progressively grow to ever larger multiples of government disposable income. 10

13 We show 20 Proposition 1 If [] 1+, () =max ( ) is a contraction mapping and (6) has a unique fixed point,. The result recalls the condition for the convergence of a growing dividend stream: only a sufficiently high interest rate precludes the mortgaging of all future disposable income. Figure 1 shows the determination of graphically. The condition [] 1+ ensures that the slope of () remains below unity; there is no intersection between the curve and the line beyond. We denote arg max ( ) and show Proposition 2 Maximum sustainable government borrowing is increasing in the mean growth rate, decreasing in growth rate volatility for 0, and decreasing in the risk-free interest rate. The corresponding probability of default Φ ( ) is decreasing in the mean growth rate, increasing in growth rate volatility for 0, and decreasing in the risk-free interest rate. The results are intuitive. A government that is expected to see its disposable income grow faster can borrow more, for it is expected to have more income with which to service its debt. In contrast, a government whose disposable income growth is more volatile can borrow less, for the greater likelihood of low income realizations increases the probability of default, thereby decreasing lenders willingness to lend to the government. 21 A government can borrow less when the risk-free interest rate is high, for a high risk-free rate raises lenders opportunity cost of lending to the risky government, thereby decreasing lenders willingness to lend to the government. The higher riskfree rate increases the interest rate the government must pay on its debt (see Proposition 4 below), thereby increasing the probability of default. What is true of the probability of default at maximum sustainable borrowing extends to the probability of default at any level of borrowing. Consider a government that will owe in period +1asaresultofhavingborrowed in period. DenoteΦ () the corresponding probability of default. We have 20 All proofs are in the Appendix. 21 More volatile disposable income growth also results in a greater likelihood of high income realizations. The condition 0 ensures that the detrimental effect of volatility on debt dominates. It amounts to the reasonable condition that the probability of default be less than

14 Proposition 3 The probability of default Φ () is decreasing in the mean growth rate, increasing in growth rate volatility for 0, and increasing in the risk-free interest rate. By analogy to maximum sustainable borrowing,wedefine maximum sustainable debt. Denoting =argmax ( ), wehavefrom ( )=exp( + ) in footnote 16 =exp( + )(1+ ) (8) We further define the interest rate and the expected loss given default. These are 22 and 23 = exp ( + )(1+ ) = exp ( + ) ( ) [1 Φ ( )] R (1+ ) 0 +1 ( +1 ) ( (1+ )) = 1 [exp ( ) ] exp ( )(1+ ) (9) (10) We show Proposition 4 Maximum sustainable debt is increasing in the mean growth rate and decreasing in the risk-free interest rate for 0. The interest rate is increasing in the risk-free interest rate for 0. Not all comparative statics can be determined because the direct effects of,, and on,,and often are often counteracted by their indirect effects through or. Consider for example maximum sustainable debt, which intuition and the result 0 in Proposition 2 suggest should be decreasing in growth rate volatility. That such is not the case is due to the offsetting role of the probability of default Φ ( ), the increase in which requires an increase in debt to be repaid absent default as compensation for the larger probability of default in which partial payment only is received. Similar considerations apply to the interest rate and the expected loss given default. 22 The last equality in (9) uses (1 + ) = ( ) { [1 Φ ( )]} from (21) in the Proof of Proposition The equality in (10) is derived in the Appendix. 12

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